Bring me to your community
I’ve taught engaging, liberatory Torah to communities across the US and internationally, to students of all ages and Jewish backgrounds. I would love to bring my work to your community! I offer scholar-in-residence weekends, online classes, and more. Be in touch at avigayil.halpern@gmail.com - let’s dream together!
Sample Classes
“Maintenance Work and the Mishkan: Care, Repetition, and Torah”
The Torah repeats the process of building the Mishkan twice: first in God’s instructions, and then in the Israelites’ fulfillment of this guidance. This class explores the sanctity of this repetition and of what the artist Merle Feld calls “maintenance work” — the tedious daily tasks we must do to care for one another.
“Ordered In Your Limbs:” Learning Torah as Bodies and Not Just Brains
In this class, we explore texts about Beruriah, one of the Talmud’s rare women Torah scholars, to think through how our own bodies and lives affect – and can enrich – our experiences of Torah study and Judaism.
Writing Our Own Torah: Queer Torah For Everyone
In this class, we study traditional Jewish texts alongside queer theory to ask what it means to have a personal relationship with Torah – and how Torah can have a personal relationship with us.
Testimonials
“Rav Avigayil has a knack for teaching deeply complex Torah in a way that makes it accessible to those who have never encountered it - or even encountered the topics or or themes that come up from it. In doing so, she invites students into a new conversation in a way that respects where they come from and respects where they have the potential to take their learning.”
-Rabbi Amelia Wolf
Avigayil is an extraordinarily talented educator that brought incredible richness to our community. She shares her expertise with sensitivity, accessibility, and passion, drawing diverse audiences into the world of Torah. I was impressed with how well she could navigate complex and sensitive topics with our group, leveraging her gifts and skills to engage our community in deep and meaningful Torah.
-Rabbi Rachel Isaacs
Rabbi Avigayil Halpern recently visited our community as a scholar in residence. She was an absolute delight to learn with. Her Torah was deeply invigorating, bringing in less often heard voices and perspectives, helping us to think through the questions that we are wrestling with as a Jewish community in this time. Rabbi Halpern's sourcesheets were thoughtfully curated, and accessible to members of our community with little to no Hebrew knowledge, as well as those with high textual literacy and a history of traditional Jewish scholarship. That all of us were engaged and walked away feeling that we had learned something new and wanted to learn more is a testament to her approach of teaching and sharing Torah. She helped to bring us into a relationship and a conversation. With each other, and with Jewish texts. It was beautiful to experience, and we were so grateful for her time with us.
-Jenny Goldstein Prahl, Rochester, NY
R’ Avigayil’s webinar at T’ruah about using Torah for having conversations about differences was by far the most successful webinar I have seen in my time at T’ruah. Her choice in Torah was creative and perfect for the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs of the participants, and her wisdom and calming presence invited people in in a complicated political moment. Participants and staff are still talking about the success of that webinar almost a year later.
-Rabbi Jenna Shaw, T’ruah
Rabbi Avigayil Halpern was our inagural Jewish Women's Foundation of Chicgo Scholar in Residence for our Jewish community of people in their 20s and 30s. Our community is diverse in many ways, including political assumptions and previous and current Jewish involvement. Walking into this complex scene, Rav Avidayil hit it out of the ball park. She taught two engaging and intellegent classes, one on the Jewish ethics of talking about our sex lives and one on queer moments in hilchot nidda. Both successfully integrated learners with an extremely wide range of Jewish textual knowledge and both were fun and intellectually rigorus. She gave a compelling drasha on Shabbat morning on one of the most challenging sections of the Torah, the commandment to wipe out Amalek, that I still think about years later. She was a delight to host and to welcome into our community, and brought rabbinic perspective and expertise that enriched my constituents. What a joy to learn with her!
- Rabbi Sarah Mulhern, Silverstein Base Lincoln Park, Chicago, IL